Mash
by Azurite
Summary: Mokuba creates a game for Seto to play-- one that might find his older brother's Destiny! Companion piece to Pop; Oneshot.


**Mash  
By: Azurite - azurite AT fanfiction.net**

**Site: azurite.incandesce.org  
Blue Eyes And Apricots:** The web's first Seto x Anzu fanlisting! The link is on my FFnet profile page, or can be found via the above link to my main site!

**Disclaimers:** I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh or its characters. I make no profit from this, unless the swelling of my ego is worth something on eBay these days. And I don't own any sort of computerized version of the game involved in this nifty oneshot. It does exist, if you really want to look for it, but the old fashioned paper-and-pen way is fun too.

**Note: **This is all **Guardian Kysra's** fault. Go read her stuff. It's great.

* * *

It was a disaster area. 

Papers were scattered everywhere in the living room, all over the table and the floor, and many were sticking out from the couch and recliner cushions.

And not one of them was blank.

Each paper was scribbled with letters across the top. Boxes filled with swirls or tally marks in the center of the page caught Seto's attention, and on every side of the box, various initials and abbreviations were crossed out or circled.

_What the heck **is** all this stuff?_ Seto Kaiba wondered briefly, wading through the mess to find his little brother.

"Mokuba--" He started in a warning voice. If his kid brother had gone and turned his OFFICE into a disaster area like this, there would be HELL to pay.

In the form of tickling.

"Big Brother! You're home!" Mokuba poked his head out of Seto's office, and the older boy felt his stomach sink.

Not his office...

"Mokuba, what is this mess?"

"Huh? Oh!" Mokuba grinned sheepishly, "Paperwork."

"I can **see** that." Seto grimaced, "But what is it for?"

"Well," Mokuba bounced out of the office and grabbed Seto's hand, "remember how you wanted me to start working on programming? I've been working really hard on something the past few weeks, and I want you to test it out!"

Seto glanced into his office and heaved a sigh of relief. Everything was just as he'd left it.

Except, his computer was on, and something was blinking.

"Go on, try it!" The 12-year-old grinned mischievously, nudging his brother towards the computer. "And tell me how you like it when you're done!"

And with that, Mokuba dashed out of the office in a fit of giggles, slamming the door as he went.

Seto seated himself cautiously, keeping a trained eye on the computer. He **had** asked Mokuba to start programming, and had told his younger sibling to come up with some sort of mini-game as an example. But he hadn't expected Mokuba to finish it so soon.

What was this game about, anyway?

"MASH!" The screen read in bright, blinking letters. And under that, "The Game That Finds Your Destiny!"

Seto blinked.

_Finds my... destiny? What the?!_

Okay, but he had to give it a shot. Because it was Mokuba's.

After a few clicks, Seto was prompted to enter his name, his birthday, and his favorite number between 5 and 999. Deciding he wanted to be stubborn, he entered 657 as his favorite number-- just to test out the engine speed of Mokuba's programming.

"Please select 4 choices from each category below." The screen read, displaying a series of various things-- cars, colors, cities, and a series of numbers between 0 and 10. Mokuba had used a simplistic web page design to create a form with checkboxes, but he'd also incorporated a script to prevent more than four choices from being selected for any one category.

_Not bad. _Seto continued to click, only slightly amused by the 'purpose' of the game.

"A limo, an RX-7, an Acura Integra Type R, or a Lancer Evo VII... red, black, blue, or silver. Paris, New York, Tokyo, or London. 2, 3, 6 or 9." After reviewing his choices one more time, Seto clicked "NEXT."

"Say when." The screen read. Almost immediately, a swirl started appearing in the center of the screen, steadily growing in size as it looped around and around.

_Say wh-- what?_

"When?" Seto finally said aloud, and the swirl stopped. Mokuba must have used voice-recognition technology-- either that, or he'd purposefully left the microphone on.

A line shot through the outermost line of the swirl, right back into the center, counting the number of rings the swirl had made before Seto had called for it to stop.

This number was added to 657, creating a grand total of 673. A nice, big number.

"Process results?" The screen queried. Seto hit "Yes."

What **was** this thing?

A screen with Seto's previous choices appeared, the swirl-and-line boxed in the center, with the car types and colors on the right, the numbers 0-10 on the bottom, the cities in the lower left, and a strange gray area with a red question mark (and a heart for a dot) in the upper right.

A blinking line shot through all the choices-- including a row of odd letters at the top of the box that Seto hadn't noticed before. Among the letters was the series "MASH." That was the name of this 'game,' right? But what did it mean?

After a few moments, the screen said, "COMPLETED!" An odd little melody came out of nowhere, and a small Blue Eyes White Dragon bounded onto the screen, opening its mouth in a roar and breathing out hearts.

Seto rolled his eyes.

"You have a wonderful future ahead of you, SETO KAIBA!" The screen read. "Take a look at your results, and see your destiny!"

Nearly all the letters at the top of the screen were crossed out, save one-- M.

"M is for Mansion! You're going to live in a lavish mansion filled with every possible amenity! Click here to see some nice neighborhoods with mansions in them! Consider using KaibaCorp's real estate branch to help you with your selection!"

Seto blinked. Mokuba had set it up to be ad-ware for KaibaCorp?

How amusing.

In any case, Seto already **lived** in a mansion. So this first result was no surprise. But he was vaguely curious what the other options had been-- what the other letters had stood for. Clicking on the appropriate button, he was brought to a pop-up window that displayed all the results-- and there were tons of them!

"Garage, Mansion, Apartment, Shack, Street... Sewer? Mokuba, that's disgusting. And I'm not one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles." He kept reading aloud, his eyes skimming over the choices, "House, Palace, Dump, Beach House, Flat, Cabin, Cave --I'm not Batman-- Hotel, Resort..."

Mokuba had gone all out, hadn't he? Each choice also had a description of available residences matching the city that had also been chosen.

Since Seto had gotten "Tokyo," he already knew where all his choices were. Ironically, the mansion pictured was his own.

As for car types and colors, it had been eliminated down to a red Lancer Evolution VII. Not surprising-- Seto already owned one. And an Integra Type R, and an RX-7, and a limo-- though the limo was black, not red. The program also listed dealerships in the area, and even provided the phone number for KaibaCorp's credit and financial hotline.

"We've saved the best for last!" A series of blinking letters proclaimed near the gray portion of the screen. "You have to print your results to get the whole story! Make sure your printer is turned on and paper is loaded!"

_Not a wise idea, Mokuba._ Not everyone **had** printers, as asinine an idea that was. But perhaps Mokuba had rigged it that way just for him. Mokuba **was** pretty sneaky...

"Print?" Seto clicked the "Yes" button again, and stared at the paper inching its way from the printer curiously.

When he finally whipped it out, his eyes widened.

"You're destined to marry TÉA GARDNER and have 3 KIDS! Congratulations!"

_What the...?!_

On the left side of the page where the gray and red 'question mark' area had been were a series of head shots of various girls-- ones Seto recognized as ones from his Duelist Profile bank. Of the four shown --Mai Valentine, Serenity Wheeler, Téa Gardner, and the famous Chinese Duelist, Vivian Wong-- all the faces but Téa's were grayed out and had an X through them.

Underneath her picture, it listed some 'interesting info' about Téa that Seto started reading aloud.

"Birthday: August 18th (Leo). Favorite color: Light blue. Favorite animal: panda. Measurements: 36-2-- MOKUBA!"

His face inexplicably scarlet, Seto turned towards the door, trying his best to school his eyes for the iciest glare he could manage.

Mokuba opened the door hesitantly and poked his head in with a grin.

"I see you've gotten your results. Let's see 'em!" He darted over and grabbed the paper from Seto's hands-- who remained standing in a state of semi-shock. His Icy Glare of Doom hadn't worked. Maybe he was losing his touch. But besides that...

It was preposterous. Him and Gardner?

"Ooh, you got Téa! She's really cool! You **would** make a good match with her, now that I think about it."

"Mokuba..." Seto tried his best to sound like he was warning his younger brother, but it came out as more of a whine, a fact which startled Seto to the point where he cleared his throat and stared down at Mokuba.

The younger boy only stared back innocently. "What? It's a game, right? And it works on a lot of the principles you taught me--" Mokuba clicked on the screen, "and it even saves your data if you want to try again." He turned back to his brother, smirking in a way that reminded Seto of himself.

That wasn't right. Mokuba wasn't allowed to smirk like that. That was **his** smirk!

"'Course, I think you'll just keep getting Téa, 'cause you two are MEANT TO BE!" Mokuba exclaimed before leaping out of his brother's way. "It's DESTINY, Big Brother, don't try to deny it!"

And with that, Mokuba skipped out of the room, laughing as he went.

After a moment, Seto settled back down in front of the computer. He glanced down at the paper, where Téa's smiling face looked up at him with brilliant blue eyes.

There was no way her eyes were that blue. It had to be something to do with the cyan ink cartridge. It was probably leaking.

"If at first you don't succeed..." Seto started the game all over again.

* * *

"..." 

Seto stared at the second piece of paper he'd printed, his face twisted in a mask of dismay.

Téa. Again.

This time he'd gotten a silver Integra Type R as his vehicle of choice, and he was to live in a Penthouse Apartment in New York-- and have 6 kids instead of 3.

Seto growled, balling up both pieces of paper and tossing them across the room.

Why was this infuriating him so much?

It wasn't that Mokuba had created a silly game. It was... well... Seto didn't know. But he didn't like it.

Him and GARDNER?

That **twig**?

_Twigs don't have measurements like 36-26-3-- God, what am I thinking!?_

Seto Kaiba's analytical mind supplied him with a figure with said measurements-- and the traitorous part of that same mind pasted Téa's smiling face on the top of that figure.

Seto's cheeks burned once more, and he forced another growl down his throat. He shook his head and set out to find out just how Mokuba had rigged the game. There had to be some kind of a trick.

* * *

Ten minutes later, Seto Kaiba was banging his head on his monitor in frustration. 

Blinking on the monitor was a laughing miniature Blue Eyes White Dragon, with a speech bubble coming from its mouth that said "No HAX0RZ!"

Mokuba's **wonderful** sense of humor.

"It is a poor teacher whose own student cannot best him." Seto grumbled, though the old proverb wasn't of much comfort. Mokuba had outsmarted him. He'd created a game that was impossible to hack or decipher. Seto Kaiba had no idea how it worked.

Maybe it really was "destiny" at work?

Seto glanced at his third attempt at printing different results, and again, Téa Gardner's startling blue eyes and rosy lips smiled at him from the left side of the page.

Preposterous.

* * *

Seto Kaiba couldn't get it out of his head. 

No, correction-- he couldn't get HER out of his head.

The entire day since class had started, Seto had felt his gaze drift over to Téa Gardner's form, watching her as she studied or took notes on the teacher's lecture.

Meanwhile, his own notes were starting to look like chicken scratch, with the way they went crookedly off the lines, and some characters couldn't even be read.

When lunch rolled around, Seto Kaiba was relieved-- without any inane schoolwork to do, he could bury himself in reading, and just pretend Téa wasn't there.

Yeah, that would work. It was the perfect plan!

And it **was** the perfect plan-- until a glimpse of sudden movement caught his eye, and he found Téa stumbling forward into his aisle, trying to catch something that had flown up into the air. Whatever it was landed on the floor with a slight 'chink' sound, and she picked it up, an odd smile on her face.

Her eyes --those brilliant blue eyes, which were utterly natural and not caused by any sort of ink cartridge leak-- locked with his, and Seto Kaiba's heart leapt up into his throat.

And then she just smiled at him, like there was absolutely nothing wrong. He blinked a few times, more startled than he was confused.

Him and Gardner?

Seto averted his gaze, hoping that the novel he was reading hid his crimson cheeks.

Preposterous.

* * *

YEEEEEEEEP, the companion piece to "Pop" is now finished. And it's all **Guardian Kysra's** fault-- she mentioned this game (that I used to play in school- yes, all the way up to high school!) and I decided it would be a perfect side story for Seto. But since Seto would never actually play that game, I decided to have Mokuba make him do it. There is, in fact, a computerized version of this game (though it doesn't show you pictures or give you hotline numbers, hehe) at www.playmash.com I believe. 

For those of you not familiar with the game, here's how it works:

(1) On a piece of paper, write MASH. Or GMASHPD, or any other series of letters that stand for a place where you can live. And you can be as unreasonable as you want-- you can even pick Underwater, In Space, or something like that.

(2) Draw a box underneath the letters- it should be in the middle of the page. Beneath the box, write a series of numbers between 0 and 10. On both the right and left sides, write a series of four lines, for each category: Car, Car Color, Future Love, and Cities. You can put them in any order you wish. Now fill in the lines with names of things you'd like-- for example, the kinds of cars you'd like to have, the colors you like best, the people you have/had crushes on... that kinda thing.

(3) Now pick a random number-- larger is better, but if you're doing it by hand, try to stay under 30. If you want, you can have someone draw a swirl or tally marks, and when you say "When" they stop drawing. Count the number of lines and use that as your random number.

(4) Now go through each category once, starting with the Residence Initials (MASH). When you get to your random number, cross out the item in that spot. Keep doing this until you eliminate everything but ONE name in each category. And then you will know who you're destined to marry, how many kids you'll have, where you'll live and in what kind of house, and what color and type of car you'll have!

There are also variations that include...

Wedding Dress/Tuxedo Color (White, Orange, Rainbow colored)  
Place where married (Church, Temple, Garden, Las Vegas)  
Job you'll have  
Pets you'll have  
Month you'll be married in (shouldn't use all the months; pick 4 of the 12 you'd like best)  
Anything else you might want to know...

Go try it! Hope you had fun with this... my second Yu-Gi-Oh oneshot! It's slightly longer than Pop, and probably a bit funnier too. Leastwise, I think so. Let me know what you think!


End file.
